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Comment by avar | Hacker News Reader

This is not at all what's happening. Structurally, those big countries can easily get outvoted, and to change EU law it needs to be proposed by the commission, which is voted in by the council, where all member states have an equal vote.

It then needs to be passed by the parliament, where votes are proportional to population. There Germany and France have the most members, but just over 1/5 of the overall membership.

What actually happens is that all the other states also want these policies, and then when their electorate doesn't like it they say "the big bad EU made us do it!". This is in no small part the cause for Brexit.

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> It then needs to be passed by the parliament, where votes are proportional to population.

Votes in the parliament aren't directly proportional to population in order to prevent large countries from dominating votes. Germany has 1 MEP per ~855k citizens, France ~870k while smaller countries like Belgium or Ireland have 1 MEP per 400-500k citizens.

That's pretty much the same in any country. In the UK constituencies go from 22k to 110k.

In the U.S. congressional districts range from 500k to 1 million.

The problem I have is that within these big countries, the policy doesn't have a majority. For me, that questions the democratic legitimacy for the european legislative process.

Because it can evidently be abused to push through "unpopular" laws that only serve special interests.

A majority of what? A poll among the general population? support of local parliamentarians in those countries?

In either case, that doesn't per-se call the democratic legitimacy into question. The entire point of a representative democracy is that you elect competent people to make decisions for you, which by definition means that a lot of the time they'll decide to do X even though Y would be the outcome if the issue were to be put to a popular vote.

No, you are correct. This is not the only example that I would suggest questions their mandate and democratic processes. But there a quite a few topics that add up.

This law is a very plain case of trying to enact a law serving special interests. Just look at how it came to be and who is responsible for that. It is a form of nepotism that does indeed question legislative processes.

The mandate of any democratic government is only valid as long as enough people believe in it. And stunts like these create doubt.

You should remember that for the next time you point the finger towards euro-critical movements.

Shit like this isn't necessary, doesn't solve any problem and is certainly not in the general interest of the population. Because it just servers special interests.

edit: And just to add: enacting laws via the EU to evade domestic criticism is a widely known and often employed political tactic. There are countless examples of this.

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